


Staying Up Late

by virmillion



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Insomnia, M/M, Nightmares, tea is also there, virgil is tired and doesn't know how to deal with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16159742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virmillion/pseuds/virmillion
Summary: Virgil can’t fall asleep. Logan comes over to try to help. Everyone is tired.





	Staying Up Late

**Logan** : You said goodnight half an hour ago, but you just reblogged something on your tumblr, and it is well past when you ought to be asleep. Are you alright?

**Virgil** : im fine

**Logan** : Face check, then?

**Virgil** : we dont need to do a face check

**Logan** : I’m coming over.

**Virgil** : you dont have to come over

**Virgil** : im fine

**Virgil** : dont come over

**Logan** : If you’re fine, you should have no problem with a face check.

**Virgil** : you suck

**Virgil** : [external image]

**Virgil** : seriously im fine

**Virgil** : you dont need to come over

**Virgil** : just forget i sent anything

**Virgil** : im fine

**Logan** : I’m on my way.

 

Virgil locks his phone screen, staring at the swirling shadows dancing over his ceiling. He presses his freezing fingers into his eyelids, watching the pops of light flicker over his vision, illuminating the empty room. His analog radio sings on happily, an oblivious source of white noise filling his ears with shapeless sound. That’s it, then. Logan will come over, and see the pathetic, chaotic state of his room, and his pathetic, disheveled face, and he’ll figure out just how bad today sucked, and how useless his drive out here will have been, because as smart as Logan likes to think he is, there’s nothing he can do about this relentless—albeit inexplicable—insomnia.

With a heavy groan to inform the uncaring room of his aggravation, Virgil kicks back his layers of blankets. Several pillows thump loudly on the carpet as he swings his legs over the edge of his mattress, kicking more blankets down with him. He ignores the miniature avalanche, digging his chilled fingers into his biceps until his arms ache.

Drawing his shoulders to his ears and suppressing a yawn, he makes his way smoothly through the clutter on the floor, having long since learned how to navigate around the mess. He nearly trips on a stray hoodie he forgot about, hesitates, reaches for his bare arms again, moves on. No hoodie, not right now. Logan already knows his emotional state. He won’t care about his attire.

Virgil inhales sharply as he tears away the dead skin on his bottom lip, forcing himself not to cry out as he rams his toe against the part of the door frame that juts out—in his defense, he didn’t mean to knock the wood loose. It’s not his fault he isn’t used to the obstacle by now. By some force of sheer luck, an airplane soars overhead at the same moment, masking the noise and leaving his sleeping cat in peace. Her tail flickers gently at the rumbling of the floor, but that’s it.

He continues to the landing of the second floor, counting out the first five steps, the solo sixth, the next ten, down to the first floor as he wraps his fingers around the railing. He presses the sharp edge of it against the crease of his hand, squeezing three times and tapping the underside with his index finger before moving for the front door. Pulling on the chain that dangles around his neck, he slips the zebra-striped key into the lock, using his free hand to gather his hair up into a low knot. As he slips out through the door, he pulls the hair through an elastic, letting the pins of pain from the tugs at his hair ground him.

While Virgil might tell you that he wears the key around his neck for the aesthetic, or because he doesn’t like leaving it in plain sight from outside the house, or because it’s nice to have that reassuring weight on his chest that he always has a place to go back to after the hardest of days, he would be lying both to you and to himself. It’s because he likes running the ridges over the pads of his fingers, a leftover habit from worrying the edge of his student ID in high school. It’s because he likes the familiar sensation of something solid digging into his hand, something he can control and maintain and not worry about losing. Whatever he makes up to explain away the presence of the key on his chest, don’t believe him. He’s lying to you. He’s probably lying to himself, too, so don’t believe what he doesn’t tell you, either. Don’t worry, it’s not like he believes his lies, so it’s fine. He’s fine. I swear.

The feeling of the cold concrete under his thin pajama pants is both jarring and reassuring. He presses his hands into the popcorn texture, barely acknowledging the chills racing over his skin until his neck tingles. Rather, he devotes his focus to the blissful not-quite-emptiness of the night. Where the sky is empty of a sun, it is full with a shrinking moon and fading stars. Where the air is empty of conversational chatter and car horns, it is full with the promise of more noise, more yells, more songs, tomorrow and the next day and the next week, on and on and on into forever and beyond.

And where the world is empty of companions and sleep, it is full with Logan’s car careening around the road’s bend, squealing to a stop in front of Virgil.

He blinks. A second passes. Two. Three. Mere moments before Logan is slamming his door shut, locking it until it beeps three times, unlocking it once, and relocking it—just how Virgil asked him to, forever ago. He remembered. And then Logan is tripping and stumbling over his feet, barely keeping himself vertical as he bounds over the curb and the sidewalk and the stretching weeds, and he’s holding Virgil so close as Virgil lightly returns the embrace and fights back the relentless burning behind his eyes.

“I thought I told you not to come, you dummy,” Virgil murmurs, burying his face in Logan’s shoulder.

“We both know you have the worst poker face, no matter how much you try to hide it in face checks,” Logan whispers back, placing a gentle hand on the back of Virgil’s head. He worries a few strands of hair between his fingers, internally pleading with Virgil to relax, to just fall asleep right here so he doesn’t have to be tormented by endless consciousness. “So how about we go inside before you freeze all the way through?”

“That’s a terrible idea,” Virgil says, following Logan to the door. The latter unlocks it with a polka-dot key lashed to his wrist, standing aside to let Virgil in without him having to touch the doorknob.

“Have you eaten today?”

“You aren’t supposed to eat after nine.”

“Have you eaten today?”

“I had macaroni, so my stomach hurt because cheese, at, like, two.”

“Have you eaten today?”

Virgil relents, dropping his shoulders and sighing. “No.”

Logan doesn’t waste his breath reminding Virgil about the importance of proper dieting—this is not the time nor place to make him feel worse.

“Do you want me to go set up, like, the TV or something? Or, um, I could get a few blankets, or—” Virgil cuts himself off as Logan shakes his head, still on a beeline for the kitchen.

“Do you currently feel capable of eating food?”

Virgil’s eyes fall to the floor as he hesitates, wanting to make Logan happy and proud with how  _ normal _ he can be, but— “No.”

“Okay. I’m going to make you tea, then, and you don’t have to finish it, but it will be here, just in case you need it.” Logan sets up camp in front of the sink, scrubbing at week-old dirty dishes while the teas steep. Virgil steps closer, wrapping his arms around Logan’s torso from behind and pressing his cheek into the fabric draped over Logan’s shoulder. “Hi.”

“Hi.” For a moment, that’s it, just the sound of the tea bag splashing around as they stand in a silent embrace, motionless in an empty kitchen well past any reasonable hour of wakefulness. As is inevitable, Logan breaks the silence, lightly running a hand over Virgil’s hair.

“Think you’d feel better if you went upstairs? Be easier to sleep up there, at least.” Virgil buries his face deeper into Logan’s shoulder, feeling his nose smush sideways. “I’ll carry your tea, but you really would be better off upstairs.”

With no small amount of resignation, Virgil trails behind Logan up the sixteen stairs, counting them out two at a time—one two three four five step step six step step seven eight nine  _ ten. _ His cat stares at him, her tail flicking curiously as she watches him trudge into his room. Once Logan has the tea safely placed on the nightstand, she traipses across the floor, rubbing her face against Logan’s sock.  _ He didn’t even bother to put on shoes,  _ Virgil thinks, staring at the patternless void of dark blue.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Logan tries, sitting beside Virgil on the low mattress and wrapping an arm around his shoulder. Virgil hesitates before shaking his head. “Do you want me to leave?” A longer pause. A smaller head shake. “Do you want to just sit here and be quiet with your radio’s easy listening tunes of lovelytheband?” That one almost gets a half-hearted  _ heh _ of a laugh, along with a nod. Logan squeezes Virgil’s arm gently, using his free hand to trace patterns on Virgil’s leg. A light chill runs just under the surface of Virgil’s skin as he leans into the touch, tilting his head to rest on Logan’s shoulder with a sigh.

The only thing breaking the peace of this separate world they’ve created is Virgil’s cat, who jumps onto the mattress and collapses against Virgil’s hip, her determined purring vibrating his torso. It’s when Virgil’s eyes start to slip shut that he starts worrying.

“I don’t want to fall asleep again,” Virgil murmurs, feeling water prick at his dry eyes as he forces them to close, open, close. “I can’t, and I don’t want to.”

“Do you want to tell me why?” Logan reaches for the previously untouched mugs, passing the one covered in constellations to Virgil. “Drink some. It might help, and it might not, but it’s better than nothing.”

Virgil takes a careful sip, not giving it back once he’s done. He lets his hands leech the warmth from the ceramic, hot enough to make him shiver. “I don’t want to tell you why because I don’t want to annoy you, but I don’t want you to be annoyed because I’m playing at coyness or something.”

Logan stops tracing patterns on Virgil’s leg, instead pressing his hand down to assure Virgil that he’s here, that it’s not a dream, that  _ I’ve got you and I’m not going to leave you, no matter how hard you might find that to believe. _ “You won’t annoy me. I’m not trying to pressure you, and I apologize if it comes across that way, but I’m here for you, however you need me to be.”

A long moment passes where Logan thinks Virgil might remain silent, where he thinks the other might even have fallen asleep, until Virgil shifts his position. He shuffles closer to Logan, slouching sideways until the curve of his torso fits pleasantly against the warmth of Logan’s side.

“I’m scared to fall asleep lately. More nightmares, ’n more worries, ’n it takes longer ’n longer every night, ’n every second I’m still awake is an irrefutable failure to do the most basic of human tasks, ’n it sucks.” Logan says nothing, instead retracting his arm from Virgil’s shoulder to his back, scratching the bare skin with feathery fingernails. More chills shoot down Virgil’s spine and up into his skull, a fuzzy feeling he doesn’t want to lose. “A lot of it’s that cat one. With the cabin and the trampoline and everyone we know fitting in the cabin? And then the huge white cat from the forest, and no one cares once it—” Virgil shakes his head. “Never mind. You already know about that one. I don’t even know why I bothered to tell you, ’s not like it matters or—”

“Everything you say matters,” Logan says, working his way up to kneading the knots in Virgil’s shoulders. “Even if it sounds silly, or you regret the words once they’re out, they all matter. You matter, Virgil.”

Virgil shudders before leaning forward to press the heels of his hands into his eyes. If he has to talk about this, at least he doesn’t have to see the feigned sympathy on Logan’s face. At least, he thinks it’s feigned. It’s probably feigned. It would have to be, to be willing to put up with Virgil’s nonsense. “Or, like, one where I was turned back to being ten, and I knew it happened, but not how, and I couldn’t figure out how to get back to now, and I told my mom and it had something to do with a gas station’s prices being at two eighty-nine, which I knew was weird because it was supposed to be above three dollars in order for it to be the future, so I had to jump through the LED, and I knew that was the answer but I didn’t know how to do it and there was a minivan thing that we used to have ages ago, and then I woke up and it was five.

“Or when I was suddenly back in high school, and there were auditions in the basement, and all the seniors were there doing basics, plus one of the junior captains, which I somehow knew was because the staff thought she deserved it more than me, but the people at the audition had me reading off a script, and then I go back outside and it’s flag block and I have to sprint to my spot and I get yelled at for wearing my shoes even though we’re on the grass because everyone else is barefoot, and then we do five and five and I blink and I’m back in the basement and they have the results and they’re about to tell us and I wake up and it’s four.

“Or when I didn’t know who I was but I was  _ him _ and I was angry and I think it came from a fight between Mom and Dad where Dad was angry again and no one knew why, but we started as a family at states where the field markers like the zero and the word state were on fire and floating above the field and suddenly we flash to the entryway and everyone realizes that we left something on the field and laughs but I don't see it. So I have to wonder, like, what was that something, what was kept, what didn't change, what what  _ what, _ and then I'm me and I'm not sure who I was before but I'm me now and everyone groups off but no one is together but everyone is. And then a voice calls two names and suddenly Diane and Keith are embracing but when did they get here and then it's three people and then it's Mom and Dad and Lydia and when did she get here but Dad is still mad, but I don't know  _ why _ and then I see a veteran but I'm not me I'm Dad, maybe, I think, and I'm angry so mad so frustrated so  _ pissed _ and I'm yelling at this veteran who's young and has a blond buzzcut and is just trying to be happy and forget everything horrible from his past but for some reason I can't handle that. I am so upset at something and it's too much for me and I tell him this was all coming crashing down around his ears and then I disappear and something bad happens after I warn him, and it's like watching a movie where I’m certain it's coming but I can't tell Dad-me and suddenly a bad thing comes and goes and I'm worse for it but I'm still angry so angry so  _ mad. _

“And then I see the veteran again and he's happy and I'm angry and he tries to avoid me to make it better but he can't why doesn't he understand he  _ can’t? _ And then another bad comes and goes and I know this one is worse and I think it's at a beach but I don't know and I think I'm still Dad but I don't know anymore, I just know I’m bitter and angry pissed upset unhappy  _ mad _ mad sad bad Dad and then I see the veteran one last time and he is desperate to get me to understand something, what is it, and I’m still angry at him but I have no idea why. And it's like I'm me, but not me, but Dad, but not Dad, but a stranger, I'm watching it happen and I can't stop myself him them this person me not me what is going  _ on _ and suddenly I'm behind the wheel of a car on an empty road racing forward and there's some small hills. So everything is the white grey of winter and icy roads and a very clear thought enters my his their  _ whose _ head that this is the wheel this is the wheel  _ this is the wheel, _ and suddenly the car is picking up speed over each hill, racing forward faster faster  _ faster _ why won't I he they who  _ stop _ and suddenly a giant hill and down the other side but I'm he's they're who's not steering but watching it all unfold. So then, like, out of nowhere, a giant tree a foot and a half from the edge of the road on the right side and I he they who can feel the wheels hit a slippery patch this is the wheel this is the wheel this is the wheel  _ what wheel. _ I he they who feel my his their whose stomach drop like a roller coaster as I he they who suddenly go downhill more and try to wrench the wheel away but this is the wheel this is the wheel won't turn left and the car is flying toward the tree and I he they who can't breathe and it stops.”

Virgil exhales, long and slow and shuddering, licking at his chapped lips. He didn’t mean to let that much out. He was too frantic to even notice his mug of tea, discarded on the floor. Logan is frozen, his hand no longer scratching, and he must be so horrified, so disgusted, so completely put off by just how destroyed Virgil is that he can’t even handle something so simple as a nightmare, and—

“Stop thinking in that spiral,” Logan murmurs. “I know what you’re thinking, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”

Rather than speak, Virgil settles more heavily into Logan, letting himself become a dead weight on Logan’s shoulder. Slowly, so slowly, Logan sinks down, until he’s on his side and Virgil is wrapped in his arms, close and warm and safe. When Virgil finally allows words to slip out, his voice is cracked and choked and desperate.

“I’m so tired,” he whispers. “I’m so tired.” He draws his knees up to his stomach, burying his face in Logan’s chest. “I’m so tired.”

Logan says nothing, instead circling his arms around Virgil tighter, holding him closer as Virgil repeats the same three words like a mantra. So tired. Virgil squeezes his eyes shut, pleading for sleep to take him while also wishing for anything but. Visions of driving wheels and snow capped mountains dance behind his eyelids, bright and shining and blinding.

“I’m so tired.”

“I know.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I’ve got you.”

“I know.”


End file.
